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At first, I thought "what's the point?" Then I saw: "It's not built on top of web browser technology: it responds quickly to input, sips gently from computer r
by robotron 8y ago
At first, I thought "what's the point?" Then I saw:
"It's not built on top of web browser technology: it responds quickly to input, sips gently from computer resources, and gets out of your way."
- StreamBright 8y agoReminds me of my IRC client.
- prophesi 8y agoI wish I could use my IRC client: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16539857 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16539857
- StreamBright 8y agoI mean I wish we just stopped there, IRC, done, call it a day, never ever think about many to many written communication ever again. It works, scales, supported on all platform, text based, small memory/cpu footprint. Just like we stopped developing hammers a while ago. CS is the only field where 1.0 is never good enough. We keep "innovating" adding features that nobody needs and complicating things until it becomes this unmanagable mess. </rant>
- NickBusey 8y agoAs a big fan of IRC, I would have to say that it doesn't "work" at all when compared to Slack or Discord. You have to be online to receive messages, making it pretty much useless for any serious communication needs. Yes, I am aware of, and run, an IRC bouncer, this is not a real solution for 99% of users.
- xfitm3 8y agoOnly receiving messages while online is a feature. Want to work async? Email.
- RHSeeger 8y agoExcept some people can be having a conversation while I'm offline. When I get back on, I can catch up or have someone link me to an important part of it. It's handy.
- zamalek 8y agoIn some teams, IM+history is the email killer that happened by the mistake.
- hombre_fatal 8y agoA feature to the small handful of people who still use IRC. Look around though. Everyone else expects basic features like being able to send someone a message even though that person went through a tunnel.
- jacobsenscott 8y agoI work with a bunch of people in oakland, where comcast flickers on and off like a light bulb during a wind storm in the 1920's. So the only way to have a quick chat is over email?
- jandrese 8y agoIt's also limited to straight text. People may say it's frivolous, but sending pictures and other media is expected now.
- Washuu 8y agoIRC is not limited to plain text. Discord, Slack, and IRC all handle media the same way. Someone sends an URL and the client decides to how to handle displaying it. Textual shows me images and videos all the time from URLs sent.
- civilian 8y agoI guess then technically IRC servers need a way to have images uploaded and re-serve them. When I share an image on slack I'm usually just uploading it directly to slack, rather than using imgur or another uploader.
- jandrese 8y agoI thought they stored the graphics on the server with Discord. I know there is that out-of-band file protocol that some IRC clients support, but it was always a terrible hack that hated firewalls.
- jjeaff 8y agoThat's not how I use the feature at all. The vast majority of images and files I send are created locally. I can then upload or paste then into the chat client, they get stored on the server and shown to the other users. With IRC, I would need to use a separate service like imgur to first upload the images. And or a file hosting service like Dropbox for the files.
- Wowfunhappy 8y agoA robust IRC client could include integrated image hosting. Or ask you to plug in your Dropbox account, and then upload there automatically when you drag and drop a file or image.
- 8y ago
- okasaki 8y agoMany IRC servers provide a service that allows users to send messages to offline users, which are then relayed to the user when they come online.
- hombre_fatal 8y agoKind of a toothless "many" when this isn't even built into Freenode. I have to wonder if any IRC server I've ever connected to supported it and why I've never seen this feature.
- smolder 8y agoIt's a common IRC bot feature. Typically there's a command like: .tell <user> <message>
- okasaki 8y agoFreenode does support it. -MemoServ(MemoServ@services.)- ***** MemoServ Help ***** -MemoServ(MemoServ@services.)- MemoServ allows users to send memos to registered users. -MemoServ(MemoServ@services.)- -MemoServ(MemoServ@services.)- For more information on a command, type: -MemoServ(MemoServ@services.)- /msg MemoServ help <command> -MemoServ(MemoServ@services.)- -MemoServ(MemoServ@services.)- The following commands are available: -MemoServ(MemoServ@services.)- DEL Alias for DELETE -MemoServ(MemoServ@services.)- DELETE Deletes memos. -MemoServ(MemoServ@services.)- FORWARD Forwards a memo. -MemoServ(MemoServ@services.)- HELP Displays contextual help information. -MemoServ(MemoServ@services.)- IGNORE Ignores memos. -MemoServ(MemoServ@services.)- LIST Lists all of your memos. -MemoServ(MemoServ@services.)- READ Reads a memo. -MemoServ(MemoServ@services.)- SEND Sends a memo to a user. -MemoServ(MemoServ@services.)- SENDOPS Sends a memo to all ops on a channel. -MemoServ(MemoServ@services.)- ***** End of Help *****
- tyrust 8y agoYou can. See my top-level comment on this post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19618630 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19618630
- jensvdh 8y agoWho cares that it's not built in Electron? Slack is plenty fast, your average user does NOT notice the difference.
- obrajesse 8y agoMy laptop battery sure does. Electron is legitimately wonderful, but apps built on it are often horrible CPU hogs.
- dethos 8y agoBut I do notice and on my machine I prefer lightweight apps, so I can make the most of my existing resources instead of wasting them on a chat application.
- gsich 8y agoThey will.
- myself248 8y agoI notice how long it takes to start up the app, I notice how hard my CPU fan runs when Slack inexplicably decides to max out a whole core for a few minutes, I notice the data hit if I have to download a new version while on the road. It's definitely bloatware.
- theclaw 8y agoIf you're in more than one workspace it can take literally 5-10 seconds to transition between them while showing some BS motivational message.
- equalunique 8y agoSlack lags seconds behind when I type anything.
- beatgammit 8y agoI actually ran into that today and restarting the app fixed it. That shows that there's a pretty serious limitation if such a high profile app has these sorts of problems.
- userbinator 8y agoI don't actually use any of these services so I had no need to, but just being curious, I downloaded the Windows client; and while it may be smaller than Electron apps and native, it's still quite large for a native app --- over 30MB, and also 64-bit only (why? Do you expect to need more than 4GB of RAM for this?) To contrast, MSN Messenger 4.7, an app with similar capabilities (IM, voice, and video calling), is only ~2MB --- with several third-party reimplementations being <1MB. Makes you wonder how small you can make an app for today's messaging services if you really tried... they don't need to be that big even if they don't include an entire web browser.
- Lowkeyloki 8y agoI'm surprised at the criticism about 64-bit only. Are people still using 32-bit operating systems?
- userbinator 8y agoYes. A 32-bit binary will work just fine on a 64-bit OS, but not the other way around, and there's no reason such an app needs 64-bit, so why unnecessarily restrict compatibility?
- self_awareness 8y agoI think you're in a minority. Are there any 32-bit CPUs being produced for the mass market these days? Making a 64-bit only software is not only about wanting more than 4gb of ram; it's about debugging support, tooling, installation size and installation packages, etc. It's easier to distribute 64-bit only software than both 32-bit and 64-bit, and you can't distribute 32-bit only software because: 1. macOS will deprecate 32-bit completely soon, 2. Linux needs 32-bit libs installed on the system, and many people don't have them, 3. Windows has really good backward compatibility and still supports 32-bit. But it's the only system. So, distributing a 64-bit-only software actually makes sense.
- beatgammit 8y ago
- cryptokernel 8y agoExactly. Just leaving this here: Do tasks, get paid. Check it out in the CoinCircle website https://coincircle.com/l/50VVxbObg3 https://coincircle.com/l/50VVxbObg3
- fxfan 8y agoFor future reference to OP: the term you're looking for is "modern web technology" or "modern technology"
- userbinator 8y agoEmphasis on "modern" --- I distinctly remember using some web chat clients with IE6 in the early 2000s, and they didn't need hundreds of megabytes of RAM (average PCs had a total of between 64 and 256MB of RAM) and the whole (single-core at the time) CPU to do what today's web apps do. For anyone who knows what I mean, it might be interesting to write such a "lightweight" web client for e.g. Slack, restricting yourself to whatever JS abilities were available in 2000 or so, yet imitate as much of the features and appearance of the web client today as possible. Chances are it will still work with "modern" browsers too, and use a tiny fraction of the resources of the current one. All the better if it gets noticed and DMCA'd.
- ryacko 8y agoJIT engines operate on a time-memory tradeoff.
- ketralnis 8y agoOh please. I'm not about to start referring to a specific toolkit as "modern technology” at the expense of everyone else, particularly a step backwards
- fxfan 8y agoThat was meant as a sarcasm and I was pretty sure anybody who hates electron would get it. Sadly, no.